


A Charming Roadtrip

by Birdhouse



Category: Leverage
Genre: Family, Gen, Road Trips, answer: the grumpiest, how grumpy is eliot?, reluctant road trip, this is also mostly fluff, this is totally ohana
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-03
Updated: 2012-06-03
Packaged: 2017-11-06 16:51:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/421127
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Birdhouse/pseuds/Birdhouse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's not one of their better exits.</p><p>(Or: the one where the Leverage team drives from Oregon to Boston.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Charming Roadtrip

**Author's Note:**

> Written for A Charming Round of Bingo at Leverage Land, where all the prompts were based around Snow White.
> 
> I totally misread the deadline, and thus wrote this in about 45 minutes between work shifts. 
> 
> (I don't recommend trying that.)

**Snow**

“Damnit, Hardison!”

“Hey! This is _not_ my fault!”

“Seriously? _Seriously_? If you’d just booked the tickets _three hours_ earlier-”

Nate glowers at the road stretching ahead of them, his knuckles tight on the steering wheel. The rental car trundles slow in this spring snow. It has to, because the cars in front of it are going slow, and the cattle chutes (Jersey barriers, barricades, whatever you want to call them) prevent it from going off-road (like Parker keeps poking him in the back of the skull to do and if she pokes him _one more time_ …)

“ _Children,”_ Sophie says in a voice that lets Nate know _exactly_ where his calm went (hint: _she stole it_ ). “There is _no_ way for Hardison to hack a freak snowstorm.”

Nate glances at the rearview. Both men are sulking now, arms crossed, pointedly looking out their windows as Parker –between them, either oblivious or indifferent to their tiff (frankly Nate suspects the latter) - grins.

“Who knows, maybe driving across country will be _fun_!”

And Nate's fairly certain that they're all going to _die._

*

 

**Clumsy**

_(three hours earlier)_ **  
**

It's not one of their better exits.

They get the mark to transfer the money to their client before they gave said mark the brush-off, leave him irate and quickly maneuvering himself into prison –and that's about the point that Hardison, in premature celebration, spills an entire two-liter of Orange Squeeze over the planetarium balcony’s rail instead of pouring it into Parker’s glass.   

Sophie and Nate try, really they do, but once the mark sees the young man _he_ had been told was a painter in the presence of the cocktail waitress from that night that his ID and wallet and the photo of his granddaughter’s pet bunny had been stolen, well.

Discretion is the better part of valor, but running away is the _best_ part of survival, especially when the mark is the crime czar of all of Oregon.

“Alec! You and I,” Eliot growls in the earbuds a second later, past a steady stream of punching and grunting and screaming and a sound like strangled cats, and the sound of Alec going _guys guys guys they shut down the airport hurry up and steal a car,_ “are going to have a _long_ discussion about you reverting to a _sippy cup_.”

 

*

**Grump**

“I still don’t get why we’re runnin’.”

Eliot’s snarling. Five hours later, and he’s _still_ snarling. Sophie rubs her temples and thinks about happy things. Champagne. Purchasing truly obscene numbers of new shoes. Punching Eliot and _living to talk about i-_

Maybe she shouldn’t be thinking about that last one. But Nate, in the driver’s seat next to her, is starting to go a little bit red around the eyes and if she squints _just_ so she can see the steam…

“Because, Eliot,” Nate says, and there are tiny little cracks in the words, betraying just how close he is to _stop or I will turn this car around and we’ll all go home_. “You managed-” There’s a subtle growl –not even a growl, a _suggestion_ of a growl- from the back seat, and Nate amends, “ _We_ managed to tick off the Russian Mob, _and_ the Irish Mob, _and_ the F.B.I back there. I don’t know about you, but I’d rather be on home turf when we deal with that?”

For a second, Eliot looks placated –Sophie’s not sure, but she thinks it might be at the fact that Nate is planning on letting him punch things- but then Parker pokes Eliot in the ribs, hard. “Yeah, stop being such a grump.”

And Eliot explodes again.

 

*

 **Bash**  
Eliot's calmed down now, but he still barely manages to keep Nate from bashing his head on the steering wheel somewhere in Nebraska. One minute the mastermind’s talking normal, the next Eliot realizes that _oh, hey, that cloud looks like a sheep_ is not a normal thought process from Nate. He turns in time to see Nate’s eyes roll back in his head, catches his shoulders-

And then the car’s swerving and shuddering and heading right for a corn field. Well, the corn field right behind the telephone pole. And the guardrail. And maybe kind-of a house.

There’s some yelling from the back seat, but Eliot doesn’t really pay attention to it. He’s been in a situation kind-of like this before, but last time he didn’t have to worry about the driver (since the driver was dead) or the other passengers (since they were kind-of dead too; it had not been a good taxi ride) and he could just bail.

This time, there’s a flurry of motion that he doesn’t really remember making, and the car grinds to a stop with the bumper crunching last year’s abandoned cornstalks. There’s some more yelling from the back seat, but this sounds more enthusiastic and relieved and when Hardison’s hand reaches out and smacks against his shoulder in celebration, he doesn’t smack back.

At least, not as hard as he _could_.

 

*

**Doctor**

There are lots of things that they’re good with. Random collapses aren’t really one of them, so once they get the car out of the field it’s into the nearest town, out with the fake IDs, and right into the hospital.

 The doctor gives them all a very skeptical look, and Hardison returns it, while Parker smiles perhaps a bit too brightly and Eliot drops Nate onto the stretcher. Well, acts like he’s going to drop him, but the second the others are distracted it becomes a far more careful movement.  

And at least the doctor doesn’t throw them all out after _Eliot’s_ look.

 

*

 

**Sleep**

“How long has it been since he _slept_?” The doctor asks.

Sophie and the others look at each other, trying to think.

Portland had been a _mess_ , between finding out about the Russians, _and_ the Irish, _and_ the F.B.I. _and_ the whole mess with the planetarium, and then there had been that quite enjoyable first evening where neither of them slept –Sophie doesn’t mention _that_ part, but Eliot and Parker and Hardison all look at her _anyways_ , and she fights the urge to glare at them.

“Um.” She says, rather eloquently, and the doctor’s expression can only be described as disgusted. And, ok, maybe a little scared.

“If he doesn’t wake up in ten hours, come back. Other than that? Let him _sleep_.”

*

 **Sneeze**  
Parker didn’t mind the snores, really. They’re soothingly regular, and she can count them and predict that there will be four or five loud snores before Nate makes that weird clicky noise that Eliot says is completely normal, and no it doesn’t mean they have to go back to the doctor. 

She _does_ mind the irregular but nearly constant sneezing that starts up in Ohio and kept going all through Pennsylvania. First Hardison says it’s from the musty fields and then from flowering trees and then outside Albany he finally gives up and doesn’t blame anything, his nose buried in a fistful of tissues.

Up front, Eliot smirks and rolls up the window.

*

**Grim**

The Irish are waiting when they got back to Boston – a veritable mob of them (if you’ll pardon the pun). O’Hares, Donnellys, a couple people Parker didn’t recognize from Nate’s _do not go near these people_ lectures, all gathered outside McRory’s.

Eliot tries to make them (her, Hardison, Sophie) stay in the car with the still-groggy Nate, but the second his foot hits the curb they’re out too, forming a line – grim, like Eliot’s mouth and the set of his shoulders. Grim, if one ignored the fact that Sophie’s barefoot and sleepy, Parker’s wired, and Hardison’s still sneezing every ten seconds.

One of O’Hare’s boys smirks, like a cat, when he steps up.

Eliot doesn’t meet his eyes, his gaze flickering from person to person – counting the guns. Parker follows his example, counting the haircuts…

And then _she_ smirks, because she realizes.

They definitely haven’t brought enough.

*

**Happiness**

Happiness means different things to different people.

To Hardison, it’s sitting in front of a bank of computers with a fresh box of Kleenex and a new bottle of soda, one monitor showing his Tauren running around demolishing things, the other monitoring bank accounts and news stations, constantly looking up, making sure they’re all still there.

 To Eliot, it’s rampaging through the kitchen, ice-packs on the bruises, bandages on the split knuckles, knowing some O’Hare kid’s going to go back to his boss and tell stories about a dervish or a demon, not knowing that that same man can also make a mean omelet.

To Sophie, it’s lounging on the couch, Nate’s head resting against her thigh when his bright blue eyes flicker open and the most adorably confused look crosses his face. It’s the way Nate’s curls feel against her fingertips, the brush of his eyelashes against the silk when he drifts back off to sleep. (And, maybe a little, the thought of going shopping tomorrow on the Donnelly’s dime. It’s just so easy to take credit cards off knocked-out heavies.) __

(Eventually, Parker’ll ask Nate, again, what makes him happy. Once he’s _actually_ awake. That way, she can be sure of the answer. She’s pretty sure it’s not: _w _eren’t we just in Nebraska…?__ )

To Parker, the answer is easy.

It’s just _being there_ , watching the people who will always help her out of the snow.


End file.
